October 05, 2011

Dracula's Revenge

A month has flown by and it is time for another Cooking Light Virtual Supper Club - a great opportunity to get together with a wonderful group of folks and enjoy good food and fun. This month's theme has us thinking about Hallowe'en - everyone is either bringing something Halowe'en-ie or orange/black to the party. I found this recipe on the CL site and thought - BINGO!

Now lest you think I am off exploring some bad horror genre let me assure you that this is a casserole with plenty of roasted garlic - hence the name. Mind you, I know enough about the horror genre to know that garlic wouldn't be the revenge of Dracula but the end. Regardless this post is about a casserole and if you've googled and popped here expecting to find a tale of lusty, blood sucking vampires you best click on for you shall be disappointed.

This is a tale of a delicious casserole. 2 heads (yes, heads) of garlic are roasted first - a step I did some days before assembling the casserole. Then 1 lb of turkey sausage is cooked and mixed with fresh rosemary and sage. All that is left to do is to whip up a low-fat cheese sauce, mix it with 8 cups of cooked penne, the sausage, and the roasted garlic and voila - you have a delicious casserole ready for the oven.

When I made this casserole I was getting ready to travel to Italy (we leave tomorrow) so I was trying to not buy many groceries and things. This turned out to bea good thing since I only had 5 cups of milk. The recipe calls for 6, I only had 5 so this is what I used. Later I read reviews from others online who complained about the sauce being soupy. HA There are times when not having enough ingredients can be a stroke of good fortune. The sauce was just fine with 5 cups.

Now about that garlic. We love garlic and my cloves were GIANT cloves fresh from a local Ontario farm. I always get annoyed when a recipe says something like a head of garlic as a head can be giant or tiny. If you're a titch garlic phobic and you have giant garlic heads laying about you may only want to roast one. We used two and it was tasty but if you weren't a fan of the garlic you might be put off.

All in all this was a great casserole. I bet no one will know that it is low-fat . . .shhhhhh

Remove casings from sausage. Cook sausage in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat until browned, stirring to crumble. Remove from pan with a slotted spoon. Place sausage in a large bowl; stir in sage and rosemary.

Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Lightly spoon flour into a dry measuring cup; level with a knife. Add the flour to melted butter, stirring with a whisk. Gradually add the milk; cook until slightly thick, stirring constantly with a whisk (about 10 minutes). Stir in roasted garlic, cheeses, salt, and pepper. Remove mixture from heat. Add 5 1/2 cups cheese sauce and cooked pasta to sausage, stirring to coat. Spoon pasta mixture in a 13 x 9-inch baking dish coated with cooking spray. Top with remaining sauce. Bake at 400° for 15 minutes or until thoroughly heated.

Be sure to pop on over and see what the lovely ladies I have the pleasure of 'meeting' with each month have brought to the party:

We left the snow behind and headed to California for a long weekend of fun. We shoppedm toured wineries, tasted olive oil, met up with good friends, and ate some wonderful food. I can't wait for slow bowl 2009.